Rachel Herrick Biography
Rachel Herrick (b. 1979) is a multi-media artist best known for her detailed traveling Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies (MOCS) installations. This work has been the subject of activist and academic writing in the US, Canada, England, and Australia. In 2013, Publication Studio (in conjunction with the Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine) published Herrick’s A Guide to the North American Obeast, a two-volume book set that elaborates on the obeast narrative and contextualizes the art project within a cultural and scholarly framework. In 2014, MOCS traveled to Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland, and then to Alberta, Canada to be part of "The Missing Body," a curated group exhibition of 12 performance-based artists including Vito Aconcci and the Guerrilla Girls.
Herrick grew up on a subsistence farm in the hills of central Maine and relocated to North Carolina in 2004. She earned an MFA from the Maine College of Art in 2011 and a BA in Creative Writing from Methodist University in 2002. Herrick has been the recipient of several grants including a United Arts Regional Project Grant and a Puffin Foundation Grant.
